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Captain America, FUCK YEAH.

Over the past week, I found myself in West Virginia to visit my family and attend my (twentieth!) high school reunion. While there, Stacey and I managed to catch a matinee showing of Captain America: The First Avenger.

Holy fuck was this filled with awesome.

“Kicking the ever-living shit out of Nazi ass” has always been a favorite fantasy of mine, and Captain America delivers that in spades.

Well. Sort of. There are Nazis, but the main enemy is Hydra, one of Hitler’s secondary research arms. What would happen if there were super-humans during World War II? Well. That’s what we get to find out.

There’s a strange mirror here. We all know that the Axis powers were the ones concerned with “ubermensch” – supermen – and tried to find ways to create them. In the movie, the Allies succeed where the Nazis fail.

The story concerns itself with one Steve Rogers. Steve is a 90 pound weakling from Brooklyn. He has asthma and a host of other ailments that prevent him from protecting his professed love: America. He continually gets given the boot whenever he enlists to fight overseas.

However, Steve is a plucky duck – rather unique, in fact. He never quits. He hates bullies. He is willing to lay his life down, however meagre it is, to save others – and demonstrates this.

All of which proves that he is The One.

Steve is given a Serum by a Scientist. It makes him stronger. Faster. Taller. Muscles throb under his skin afterwards.

And then he goes out to kick an unholy amount of Nazi^H^H^H^HHydra ass. That’s pretty much what this movie is about: ass kicking in the 1940s. Captain America is to “ass kicking” as The Wire is to “thoughtful examination about the war on drugs”.

Being a comics nerd, I am familiar with Cap’s origin and all the weird (and campy) details involved (such as him clocking Hitler in the jaw on the cover of his first issue). The movie pays homage where needed and does its level-best to incorporate some of the more difficult elements into its baseline (such as Bucky). It is a solid story, well told.

Comments (3)

I have a post brewing about superheroes and mythological weaponry. Like, why does Captain America have a shield? Why does Thor have a hammer? Why does Iron Man have armor? I don’t think it’s random. There certainly are a lot of totally random heroes in comics, but I believe the ones that make sense to our mythological imaginations are the ones that become popular. In other words, when the power matches the character.

Cap not only hates bullies, he represents American ideals like liberty and fair play — which are well-represented by a shield. Just as Athena (knowledge) wears the mantle of Zeus (power). Except, Steve Rogers doesn’t get his power from a god; in his story, the qualities of America (government, the military, human rights, openness to immigrants and refugees, technology) take a weak person and turn him into a superman.

I haven’t seen anyone else write on this theme, but it seems really obvious to me… is it just too obvious to write about?

I don’t think it’s too obvious to write about, but it has been written about before (though I can’t point to any source). Your comments are on the nose, I think, though the classic interpretation is slightly modified:

Captain America is a “defender”. The shield is clearly his symbol and his weapon: he protects the weak. That’s his schtick. He’s the blindingly obvious one.

Thor is an “attacker”. His hammer is from legend (Thor, with Mjolnir, kills Jormungander [my namesake] at the end of time). Thor acts; he does not react; in the Marvel mythology, that’s his tragedy.

Tony Stark, Iron Man – his iconography is more complex. His heart, physically, is totally fucked up. And the suit is his life support. In the comics, he always wears the chest bit because he’ll die if not. They touch on this in the movies – how the generator keeps him alive. Stark is a weakling, and the Iron Man suit is his shell that allows him to interact with the world (in more ways than one: his flamboyant personality is an artifact of the armor). Tony is a fuck up, and the armor protects himself and his pals. And he knows it.

I think of Iron Man’s armor as being more like his *emotional* armor. The guy’s primary weapon is a “repulsor”, which literally pushes people away.

I was really thinking about weapons, and the Hulk doesn’t have any. I think the Hulk is (at least since the 1970s) more about this notion that there’s a “primal” self that society suppresses.

As for Captain America — for me it’s a bit more than just a dichotomy between attacking and defending. After all he does use the shield as an offensive weapon (somewhat unbelievably) and does use guns. I’m suggesting that a shield is the natural “mythological” weapon for Captain America, because a shield can represent the shelter afforded by the USA’s Bill of Rights, shelter for refugees, and so on.